The UK’s financial watchdog has launched a probe into WANdisco after the troubled software group was found to have falsified almost $15mn in revenue last year.

WANdisco said the Financial Conduct Authority’s investigation will focus on company announcements between January 2022 and March 2023, “which may have materially misstated the company’s financial position”.

“The board is co-operating with the FCA,” WANdisco said in a statement on Thursday.

It comes after the UK software group warned in March it had discovered potential fraud by a senior sales employee that will cause a significant hit to its 2022 revenues. Its shares were suspended from trading on the UK’s Aim market while it conducted an investigation.

Earlier this month, the South Yorkshire- and California-headquartered company revealed that its investigation into the potential fraud found the group had falsified almost $15mn in revenue last year.

WANdisco said its revenue in 2022 should have been $9.7mn, rather than the $24mn that it posted in January 2023, while bookings should have been $11.4mn rather than $127mn.

WANdisco also announced the departures of chief executive David Richards, who co-founded the tech company in 2005, and chief financial officer Erik Miller.

The company said these changes were “not connected to the findings to date of the independent investigation” into accounting discrepancies that began last month.

The findings by FRP Advisory, the body hired to lead the investigation, “continue to support” the view that a single senior sales employee was responsible for the “irregularities”.

The FCA probe caps a tumultuous two months for WANdisco, which helps companies move data between edge computing sites, data centres and public clouds.

WANdisco’s internal investigation came just days after WANdisco became the latest UK company to announce plans to list shares in the US. Last month, the company said it was in the early stages of exploring a “long-stated” ambition for a dual listing.

WANdisco’s shares had risen just over 40 per cent in 2023 before trading was suspended, pushing the company’s valuation to above £900mn.

The company, which was founded in Silicon Valley in 2005, listed in London in 2012 and employs more than 180 people in Sheffield in the UK and San Ramon in the US.

WANdisco announced a string of new contracts in 2022, and its partners include Amazon and Google.

In a full-year trading update on January 11, the business reported a 229 per cent rise in unaudited revenues from 2021 to 2022, up from $7.3mn to $24mn.